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Back in Julyformer WBA Super Featherweight world champion Takashi Uchiyama (24-2-1, 20) [内山 高志] announced his retirement from the sport of professional boxing, ending what had been a remarkable career for the Watanabe Gym star. Yesterday the fighter helped a retirement party, a huge event to talk about his career, share items of nostalgia and even watch video messages from former rivals. It was an emotional event with a huge number of boxing people attending and really was a celebration of Mr Uchiyama.

The event not only saw an incredibly in shape Uchiyama attend, and admit that he was still doing very regular gym road work and gym work but also, more interestingly, that he was looking to set up his own gym in the very near future.

The gym, which currently lacks a name, seems to be Uchiyama's big plan for 2018 and he's currently looking at various locations for his gym. To begin with the gym will be a boxing and fitness gym, though it does seem like the longer term plan is to build it into a fully flegded professional boxing gym.

For Uchiyama the event was clearly a big point of celebration and aparently it was a bigger success than he had expected, with 700 people expected and around 1000 actually turning up. In some ways that shows just how popular the fighter has been, in and out of the ring, and why he shouldn't have any problems drawing people to his gym in the future.

Over the last few years we've seen Japanese boxing have a huge flurry of activity in late December, with TBS and TV Tokyo both having big shows on December 31st. The headline act for TBS has been 3-weight world championKazuto Ioka (22-1, 13) [井岡一翔], who saw his father state he wouldn't be in action to end 2017,whilst TV Tokyo has been the platform for Super Featherweight Takashi Uchiyama (24-2-1, 20) [内山 高志], who announced his retirement earlier this year.

With Ioka and Uchiyama both now out of the end of year action it's fair to say that we are set for changes in the way Japanese TV show boxing, especially in late December.

The rumour coming out of Japan is a genuinely big one, that seems to suggest the end of TV Toyko's involvement in boxing.

According to sources TV Tokyo will not air a December 31st card this year, and more importantly their long association with Watanabe gym looks to be over. With Watanabe now, apparently, having inked a deal with TBS to air their yet to be announced December 31st show.

Reports suggest thatHiroto Kyoguchi(8-0, 6) [京口 紘人] will defend the IBF Minimumweight title against Carlos Buitrago (30-2-1-1, 17) in the headline bout of a TBS aired card on New Year's Eve. That report matches up with original plans to have a Light Flyweight unification bout between WBO champion Kosei Tanaka (10-0, 6) [田中恒成] and WBA champion Ryoichi Taguchi (26-2-2, 12) [田口良一], which was set to be aired on TBS before Tanaka suffered an injury.

Although yet to be confirmed a move from TV Tokyo by Watanabe would likely end the channel's association with the sport, for the foreseeable future, and potentially push the sport to becoming dominated in Japan by TBS and Fuji TV, who will be two very power channels going forward, who have almost every world champion in Japan, with WBO Flyweight champion Sho Kimura (15-1-2, 8) [木村翔] and WBO Minimumweight Ryuya Yamanaka (15-2, 4) [山中 竜也] fighting outside of the TBS and Fuji TV bubbles.

It needs to be noted that no offical announcement about any of the year ending shows have been made, but we're expecting them shortly, and this story may be confirmed very shortly.

Earlier this week we reported that former WBA Super Featherweight world champion Takashi Uchiyama (24-2-1, 20) [内山 高志] was retiring from the sport. Today saw Uchiyama himself actually announce that retirement at a special event for TV Tokyo, along with Hitsohi Watanabe, the chairman of the Watanabe gym.

Uchiyama revealed to TV Tokyo that his decision was essentially made in April and further strengthened a little bit later. The former fighter stated that he doesn't have the drive for practice that he once had, and that lingering injuries to his elbow and hand have helped make his decision.

The fighter stated that he can't fight at 100% and can't face the best causing a lack of motivation as well, and that he didn't want to continue to box in a half hearted manner.

Although the event was a mostly serious one there was some humour with Uchiyama playfully saying he didn't know what he was going to do with life, but might open a cat cafe in his free time.

Although Mr Watanabe has lost his star fighter here, he did seem to be fully behind Uchiyama's decision thanking the fighter, who got a round of applause from those at the event include people form TV Tokyo.

It was, a huge day for the gym, and one that saw former WBA Super Featherweight world champion Takashi Uchiyama (24-2-1, 20) [内山 高志] doing media work for TV Tokyo, who showed much of his career. He has been asked whether or not he would be making a comeback following his TV work, but respectfully asked the focus to be on Kyoguchi and Taguchi, and that he would announce his decision soon.

Earlier today, Japanese time, Uchiyama spoke to the media about his future and has revealed that he is now retiring from professional boxing, ending a 7 month wait for his decision. That decision will be made official very soon as he is set to take part in a press conference to announce the decision, and announce what his future plans are going to be, with some suspecting he will remain in the sport in either a role with the media, or at the Watanabe gym.

During his career Uchiyama has long been a fan favourite, and he ran up 11 defenses of the title during a reign that began in 2011 and came to an end last year, when he suffered the first of two losses to Jezreel Corrales.

During his career Uchiyama scored notable wins over Nedal Hussein, Juan Carlos Salgado, Takashi Miura, Jorge Solis, Michael Farenas, Bryan Vasquez and Daiki Kaneko and was the star of the Watanabe gym. It now seems as if he has officially handed the torce to Taguchi, Kyoguchi and the rest of the rising fighters at the gym, a gym he essentially speaheaded over the last decaded or so.

On June 5th a number of the big name fighters from the well established, and very in form, Watanabe gym went to Kagoshima for a gym training camp, which mixed the established talent with some of the rising talent.

The most established memeber of the group on the camp was former Super Featherweight world champion Takashi Uchiyama (24-2-1, 20) [内山 高志], who has yet to decide on his future, though could be at the camp either to train or act as a mentor for the younger fighters. He was joined be current world champion Ryoichi Taguchi's (25-2-2, 11) [田口良一], who is planning his next defence later in the year.